- Boffins to rice: Pump it Up!
- Saving the nuts of Central Asia.
- Nepali women abandon hybrids for landraces and community seedbanks. Weird thing is that it’s a WWF project. But where are the extensionists? If only they had listened in Bhutan. Ok that packed a lot of links in there.
- Never saw an invasive I didn’t like.
- Architectural theorist tackles wine. Not many people hurt.
- Turns out 57 insect species can play host to that famous medicinal fungus that led to war between Tibetan communities a couple of years back. Which helps how?
- An envelope is opened at FAO.
- Seeds come to South Sudan. One hopes they are of the right kinds. And that somebody is collecting what was there before. Maybe someone should call WWF.
- You want vegetables with your fish?
- Crops for the Future says not all middlemen bad.
Home of the potato
Home of the potato, a set by PRI’s The World on Flickr.
Today’s PRI piece on how an old potato is helping Andean farmers cope with climate change also points to some fun spud photos (see above) which are in fact all of potatoes, unlike in the recent NatGeo disaster. And to a great video of CIP Director General Pamela Anderson eating chips (crisps), which she really shouldn’t do because they’re not very healthy (the chips, not the potatoes), but what the hell.
The taxman doesn’t like root crops
The highland groups adopted a swidden agriculture system (sometimes known, pejoratively, as “slash and burn”), shifting fields from place to place, staggering harvests, and relying on root crops to hide their yields from any visiting tax collectors. They formed egalitarian societies so as not to have leaders who might sell them out to the state. And they turned their backs on literacy to avoid creating records that central governments could use to carry out onerous policies like taxation, conscription, and forced labor.
Now, I don’t know if this is a valid summary of the thesis of James C. Scott’s latest book, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (Yale University Press, 2009), or a flight of fancy on the part of the reviewer of the book in The Chronicle of Higher Education. But characterizing swidden agriculture based on root crops as part of a strategy of tax evasion by the hill tribes of SE Asia is certainly novel.
Nibbles: Ethnobotany talks, Cannabis taxonomy, Ag blogging, Breadfruit in Hawaii, Heirloom auction, Iron Age boozer, Andean potatoes, Minor crops conference, Insects as food
- And if you can’t get to Kew, how about an ethnobotany talk in Denver, Colorado? Or maybe one on GPS and plants, same venue? Can’t make either? Watch a lecture on Schultes in the Amazon. He’s the Father of Ethnobotany, after all.
- Misclassification of Hemp Holds Back Industrial Applications. Duuuuuuuuuude.
- Write a blog on youth and agriculture, win big money. Yeah, right, I’ve heard that one before… I’m still here, Sergey.
- Hawaii’s Breadfruit Festival is coming! So get in the mood.
- Sotheby’s auctions heirloom. No, really. Alas, probably no breadfruits.
- Now, what can I say about Scotsmen and pubs that won’t be construed as a racist slur? Probably nothing.
- Old potatoes helping Andean farmers cope with climate change. And, no doubt, obesity too.
- Conference on pesticide use on minor crops. Oh, to live-tweet that one.
- Micro-livestock makes it into the New Yorker. Can the backlash be far behind?
Nibbles: Drought tolerance, Cassava pests, Sorghum beer, Frankincense, Permaculture in Asia, RDA
- “…drought-tolerant species are not necessarily following the general “stress-tolerator” syndrome.” Meaning?
- More on that cassava-problems-will-get-worse-with-climate-change thing from CIAT.
- More on that beer-will-save-East-African-agriculture-from-drought thing.
- Two of the Wise Men to rescue “poverty-stricken Ethiopian communities.”
- F. H. King’s Farmers of Forty Centuries or Permanent Agriculture in China, Korea and Japan: The backstory. Via.
- Presenting South Korea’s genebank.